Afghan refugees

Go home. Please

Iran says it wants to repatriate them politely. Good luck to it

VISIT one of Tehran's many building sites, and you will see Afghans plastering walls and laying bricks. Stroll into an Iranian orchard, and you will see Afghans picking oranges or walnuts. Drive past a crossroads early in the morning, and you will see Afghan day-labourers sitting on the kerb, waiting for bosses with pick-up trucks who will set them to work shelling pistachios or humping carpets. Iran has 2.3m Afghan refugees, some of whom arrived during last year's war but many of whom have been there since the Soviet invasion in 1979. The Iranian government predicts they will all go home voluntarily within two years. There's optimism.

Ahmad Hosseini, the civil servant recently appointed to get something done, has devised a repatriation plan, which the United Nations will pay for. From April 9th onward, every Afghan refugee who wants to go home will receive some travel expenses and tents to live in en route. But the scheme will work only if the refugees actually choose to return. Will they?

Mr Hosseini and his colleagues will doubtless try to nudge them. Last summer, a crackdown on Afghans working illegally on building sites raised the number of those going home to around 4,000 a week. Now some Afghans are again being quietly deported. According to one foreign charity, a single mass expulsion last month saw 1,300 people kicked out of one eastern province. Iran has promised not to expel school-age children, even if their parents are illegals; but it has not always honoured such promises in the past.

Aid workers worry about what awaits the Afghans across the border. Ismail Khan, who governs the Afghan city of Herat, the likely first port of call for most of them, says he cannot cope with the predicted number. Even if a new transit camp materialises on the outskirts of the city, many of those arriving may prefer to try to scrape a living in Herat rather than march on to their native provinces, blackened by drought and war.

Many Afghans have lived in Iran for a generation, married Iranians and for all intents and purposes become Iranians. Their labour surely helps Iran's economy. But many Iranians resent their guests, accusing them of drug-smuggling (of which a few are guilty), prostitution (ditto) andthe usual accusation against immigrants everywhereof stealing jobs from the local people. Feel sorry for Mr Hosseini.